


Tongue Tied And Terrified

by ialpiriel



Series: Do You Remember (Sole Survivor Mal) [4]
Category: Fallout (Video Games), Fallout 4
Genre: False Memories, Friendship, Gen, Smoking, Synth Sole Survivor
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-01-05
Updated: 2016-01-05
Packaged: 2018-05-11 21:16:53
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 388
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/5642257
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/ialpiriel/pseuds/ialpiriel
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>F!Survivor and Nick Valentine mope at each other about being synths.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Tongue Tied And Terrified

**Author's Note:**

> originally posted on the [fallout kink meme](http://falloutkinkmeme.livejournal.com/6855.html?thread=17084359#t17084359)

“Hey Nick?” her voice is soft, in the gloom of the hotel room, the glow of the sodium lights outside barely making it through the tattered curtains.

“Yeah?” he asks. She’s huddled on the grimy mattress in the room at the Hotel Rexford, backlit by her Pip-boy, the sound of Pipfall’s opening screen beeping away.

“How do you get used to the fact they're someone else’s memories?”

Her voice cracks on the last word.

“Well.” He wants to reach for a cigarette. Not his habit, some other man’s. “You don’t.”

“Oh,” she replies, voice soft. She exits Pipfall. "How do you reconcile this version of you with that version of you, then?” She rolls onto her back. “Because _she_ loved her baby and her husband and never took a plasma projectile to the face, never looked at a woman and--” she glances at Nick, stops there. “She never picked up a gun or a machete and killed someone with it. But I, me, Mal, has, and that’s--” she pauses again, takes a shuddering breath. “How do you reconcile that?”

“Sometimes, you pretend they’re someone else.” He does reach for a cigarette, then, offers one to Mal as a courtesy. She reaches, hesitates, and takes one. He passes his lighter after he lights his own. “Like you’ve watched a movie too many times and know it by heart.”

“That makes sense,” Mal agrees. “But what about shit, like, uhhh.” She pauses, taps the flat of her foot on the floor. “Shit like the pre-war memories? Like, I have preferences for what I wanna eat--guess you don’t--but what’s mine and what’s hers?”

“Don’t know what to tell you, there,” Nick sighs, “But I know what you’re saying.”

“No one else has this problem,” Mal murmurs around the cigarette. She coughs once. “We’re the only two sad sacks in this whole fucking world with these goddamn problem.”

“Haven’t met every synth, yet,” Nick points out. “Could be others still.”

“I doubt it,” Mal replies. The smoke in silence. “You know, I bet you were the prototype for someone like me.” She laughs, and he smiles. “And look where we both ended up.”

“Really moving up in life,” Nick agrees, taps his cigarette in the ashtray, offers the tray to Mal.

“We sure are,” she murmurs. “We sure fuckin’ are.”


End file.
